July 21, 2005

Is it possible the INR memo is a red herring?

by emptywheel

Well, we've all been having a lot of fun talking about the INR memo on Plame. But I'm beginning to suspect--strongly--that it's one giant red herring, or at least only one of several central clues to this investigation. There are some concrete reasons to suspect it's not the only crucial document in this investigation. The memo doesn't mention Plame as Plame (leaving open the question of who directed Novak to use Plame instead of Wilson). From the AP yesterday, we learned the INR memo supported Wilson's take on the Niger documents, which seems unlikely to be the source of Novak's column given how negative Novak's column was. And there seem to be an overabundence of leaks about the document, which makes me wonder if someone isn't trying to distract attention away from something else.

But the real reason I think the INR memo is not the key piece of evidence here is that Novak revealed other classified information in his original column, information that may not have been in the INR memo--but may have been in a different report on Wilson's trip.

Consider that, in the SSCI report, the name of the foreign country that supplied the initial Niger-Iraq intelligence is treated as classified. For example, the paragraph describing the intelligence that spurred Cheney to ask for more information reads:

Reporting on the uranium transaction did not surface again until Februrary 5, 2002 when the CIA's DO issued a second intelligence report _________ which again cited the source as a "[foreign] government service." Although not identified in the report, this source was also from the foreign service. The second report provided more details about the previously reported Iraq-Niger uranium agreement and provided what awas said to be "verbatim text" of the accord. (37)

Rather than naming which country's intelligence service sent the report, the SSCI consistently says, "foreign government service report." Even in many of the citations from intelligence community documents, the foreign country is not named (which says the intelligence community wasn't even referring to the document in some classified communications). And later, when discussing the differences between Wilson's testimony and that of the CIA reports officer, the SSCI report blacks out the name of the country.

Third, the former ambassador noted that his CIA contacts told him there were documents pertaining to the alleged Iraq-Niger uranium transaction and that the source of the information was the ______ intelligence service. (44)

We know, however, that Dick Cheney learned which country this was (and this is the briefing that got him all excited about Niger in the first place).

The CIA sent a separate version of the assessment to the Vice President which differed only in that it named the foreign government service __________. (39)

From the way the SSCI treats the name of the country, it's clear that it is still considered classified. People have sometimes assumed that the country was England, but we're never supposed to have learned it definitively.

But right there, in the middle of Novak's Plame column, he says,

Wilson's mission was created after an early 2002 report by the Italian intelligence service about attempted uranium purchases from Niger, derived from forged documents prepared by what the CIA calls a "con man."

[emphasis mine]

In 2003, Novak revealed information that the Intelligence Community still treats as classified.

So why do I think this may have come from something besides the INR report (or at least that it suggests Novak had learned the contents of more than the INR report)?

Well, to begin with, we know from Novak that the Bush Administration was trying to gain permission to declassify a memo that described Wilson's trip. But that wasn't the INR memo. Rather, it was a CIA summary relating to Wilson's trip. From Novak again:

The story, actually, is whether the administration deliberately ignored Wilson's advice, and that requires scrutinizing the CIA summary of what their envoy reported. The Agency never before has declassified that kind of information, but the White House would like it to do just that now.

[emphasis mine]

We know that Rove mentioned declassifying something to Cooper as well--presumably this was the same CIA summary.

The reason I think Fitzgerald is keying on this summary or another document in addition to the famous INR memo is because Fitzgerald subpoenaed a press briefing Ari gave while on the trip to Africa, which had been removed from the White House website.

That subpoena also
sought a complete transcript of a July 12 press "gaggle," or informal
briefing, by then-White House press secretary Ari Fleischer while at
the National Hospital in Abuja, Nigeria.

That transcript is
missing from the White House Web site containing transcripts of other
press briefings. In a transcript the White House released at the time
to Federal News Service, Fleischer discusses Wilson and his CIA report.

So we know that Fitzgerald examined the press briefings from the Africa trip closely. John Aravosis asked a question about (and provided a link for) a different press briefing, from July 9, that has also been removed from the White House site. From that briefing:

Q: Ambassador Wilson said he made a case months before that there was no basis to the belief --

MR. FLEISCHER: And of course they would deny the allegation. That
doesn't make it untrue. It was only later -- you can ask Ambassador
Wilson if he reported that the yellow cake documents were forged. He
did not. His report did not address whether the documents were forged
or not. His report stated that Niger denied the accusation. He spent
eight days in Niger and concluded that Niger denied the allegation.
Well, typically, nations don't admit to going around nuclear
nonproliferation.

Q: But he said there was a basis to believe their denials.

MR. FLEISCHER: That's different from what he reported. The issue
here is whether the documents on yellow cake were forged. He didn't
address that issue. That's the information that subsequently came to
light, not prior to the speech.

[emphasis mine]

Ari makes it pretty clear he knows exactly what Wilson reported to the CIA. Particularly given Novak's comment that BushCo wanted to declassify the CIA summary of Wilson's trip, I think it highly likely that Ari not only had the INR memo in his grubby little paws on Air Force One, but he also had the CIA summary. White House staffers were not just looking at the INR document, they were also looking at other documents.

But there's one major problem with this theory. We know from the SSCI that the CIA intelligence report didn't mention Plame by name either.

The report did not identify the former ambassador by name or as a former ambassador, but described him as "a contact with excellent access who does not have an established reporting record."

So it's not possible that this CIA report by itself would have outed Plame (but then of course, the INR report didn't do that fully either--it only revealed her relationship with Wilson, not that she was covert under the name Plame).

It appears, then, that the source of Novak's leak was relying on more than one document. That whatever discussions were going on on Air Force One referred to more than the INR memo. And probably, given Novak's use of the name Plame, there is at least one more document out there that refers to Wilson's wife by her covert name.

Novak says one more thing in his original column that may shed some light on this:

Even after a belated admission of error last Monday, finger-pointing between Bush administration agencies continued. Messages between Washington and the presidential entourage traveling in Africa hashed over the mission to Niger.

This doesn't tell us anything that we're not already seeing in coverage--Administration officials were communicating back and forth during the flight on Air Force One. But it does suggest the content of those communications: accusations between different agencies about who should have known about Wilson. Now we know that Armitage had gotten State's best summary of Niger intelligence for Powell in anticipation of this trip.

Armitage called Ford after Wilson's op-ed piece in The New York
Times and his TV appearance on July 6, 2003 in which he challenged the
White House's claim that Iraq had purchased uranium yellowcake from
Niger.

Armitage asked that Powell, who was traveling to Africa with Bush,
be given an account of the Wilson trip, said the former official.

I have got to assume the heads of other agencies were doing exactly what Powell had done, get a summary of what their agency knew and did about Wilson's trip. Presumably, Tenet did so, which explains why Ari would have seen the CIA summary of Wilson's trip. Probably, Cheney, Condi, and Rummy did so too. I suspect there were a whole bunch of documents flying around on Air Force One that week, with each principal giving his or her version of what was known.

The thing is, we don't know what kind of documents OVP, NSA, OSP would have had related to Wilson's trip--or even the Niger story. Little appears in the SSCI report that directly reports communication within the OVP, NSA, or OSP on the Niger story--most of what appears is discussion about speeches the NSC was trying to get cleared. But look at how such language appears:

In a response to questions from Committee staff, the White House said that on September 24, 2002, NSC staff contacted the CIA to clear another statement for use by the President. The statement said, "we also have intelligence that Iraq has sought large amounts of uranium and uranium oxide, known as yellowcake, from Africa. (51)

[emphasis mine]

Note the language. The report doesn't seem to be reporting the statement directly. Rather, it seems to be reporting what the White House said was in the document. In other words, the White House didn't hand over the documents.

I'm not sure if that's correct--that the White House didn't release some of its documentation related to Niger. But I do know they were refusing to do so in 2003, during the SSCI investigation (and during the period, I suggest, when the White House was most aggressively stonewalling the Plame investigation). From an October 26, 2003 Meet the Press transcript:

SEN. ROCKEFELLER: My sense of it is that on
the Intelligence Committee, we’re going through some of the same
problems. A lot of the documents that we’ve requested from the
Department of Defense, from the White House and the National Security
Agency, we do not yet have.

MR. RUSSERT: Why?

SEN. ROCKEFELLER: I don’t know why, but we’re going to get them one way or another.

I'm not sure whether the White House ever handed over those documents (I'm trying to find that out.) But they certainly don't appear in the SSCI report.

It may very well be that Novak found out about the source of the Niger documents from the INR memo. But he seems to have had reports from more than that document, including at least the CIA summary of the trip. And given the fact that there's one piece of information that doesn't appear in either the CIA report or the INR report--the name Plame--there's a really good chance there's something more out there. Something, incidentally, that the White House may have held back from the SSCI.

Wilson goes to some length in his book (in various places) to describe the NORMAL reporting protocal in State, and also in CIA. Moreover, when he says he did not take the mission as a spy -- covertly, but instead openly, as the Diplomat that he is (ret,) that also means he reported the fruit of his trip in normal fashion.

This produced two sets of notes, one at CIA -- made by a reports officer within a few hours of his return, Notes that were probably then later incorporated in more "finished intelligence" that should have been sent upward to the Office of the VP, where the tasking was initiated.

The second set of notes originate with the Africa Desk, which was the responsibility of the Undersecretary of State for African Affairs. This is the normal reporting channel for any FSO. They may have just been filed, they may have been worked up into a report -- or they may have been shared with INR -- but this would be the choice of the Africa Desk and the Undersecretary for African Affairs. INR could have well received the notes or a Desk generated report and incorporated the information in memo sent up the stovepipe toward Cheney's office.

Questions I would be asking now:

We know that Condi received a Top Secret briefing book at some point during the Bush Africa Tour. It was faxed to her in mid trip. Did any of the original notes or reports appear in that Brief? (She had been selected as the administration spokesperson to appear on Sunday Talk -- and this was her background materials).

Second, the tasking to answer Cheney's questions about Niger and Uranium came from Cheney's office -- and that set this whole thing in motion. We don't need to know the content of reports that were returned to the Cheney Office -- but it might be interesting to know whether they were, and when they were returned. Both State and CIA. Did anyone, saybe someone from Bolton's non-proliferation office) keep the reports away from the NSC, White House, or Cheney? In fact did anyone from Bolton's office know of the Wilson Mission and reporting?

I think the Senate Report -- a piece of work done by a partisian committee where one of the co-chairs was apparently rolled by the White House is yes, of some importance, but as evidence it is at least three pointes remmoved from the action -- and I think a good case can be made for political bias coloring the work. Yes, Roberts ought to have to answer for this. In particular Kansas City reporters ought to know the issues if they don't already. In fact, Thomas Frank who knows a thing or two about Kansas is to blog next week at Josh's Cafe -- maybe he can open some channels. My take is that Roberts just got rolled by the White House and plaid partisian -- I doubt if he really understood the criminal nature of what he was asked to do.

To say the least, I was delighted with the Pincus piece in today's WP making clear the memo on the plane was indeed coded secret or above. That fact puts anyone on the plane who discussed contents in a legal bind. I think it is a nice felony to reveal classified material to anyone not cleared and with no need to know, and at a mionimum it costs clearances, but can also cost money and time in the pokey. That's delightful. If staffers are in legal jepordy, they have reason to tell some truth.

I agree with Ron that Novak is likelier to have gotten "Plame" by googling or otherwise looking it up once he knew she worked at CIA and had a particular relevance to the Niger story. He has said as much, including saying he had looked up her and Joe's campaign donations. How did Karl Rove know to say that Wilson was fair game because he was a Democrat? He had worked in several different administrations. Thatis why I suggested earlier today that Fleischer could have noticed the connection and told someone back in DC to look into the connection.

The Senate report does reference various DIA documents as early sources on Niger. There were several reports. How did Novak know it was Italy? Here is where it gets interesting. Perhaps from Libby, perhaps from someone else among the neocons, perhaps even those who thought it would strengthen the story if the Italians also came up with the actual transfer documents. Italy does sort of leap out here.

Who knows--maybe that is what Fitzgerald noticed too. BTW, would he have the security clearance to see an unredacted version of the SSCI report? Or maybe he just found it more than passing strange that the WH would go to such lengths to get someone who was just saying what various INR reports had been saying all along.

This whole thing makes my head explode, but Novak's use of "Plame" gets odder and odder. If she has normally used his name since her marriage, Googling via her husband would mostly just turn up "Joe and Valerie Wilson," etc., with only the occasional "nee Plame."

In fact, publicizing her as "Valerie Plame" must have maximized the potential damage, because that was certainly the name she used when she was most active abroad as an NOC. If the public discussion of her for the last two years had been as Valerie Wilson, people might not make the connection to the Valerie Plame they dealt with 10 years ago. Outing her as Plame made it that much easier for foreign intel services to walk back the cat.

I'm not saying this was deliberate, only that it is odd, and one more layer of mystery to this whole affair.

I also agree with most of Sara's points. Earlier I referred to Josh Marshall's post where he quoted someone as saying that they "just discarded" things that didn't support their conclusions. So maybe the CIA did send a report to someone in the VP's office but it never made it last the threshhold, because it wasn't what he would have wanted to hear. But I'm willing to bet someone over there received something from CIA, even if they did keep it in the bowels of the WH, as Condi said.

One more thing--exposing Valerie as "Plame" and Novak's later exp[osure of Brewster-Jennigs might constitute the requisite "pattern" for liability under the "Agee" part (subsection (c)) of the Intel Identities Protecion Act.

Mimikatz - Josh Marshall has been pointing out for a while the odd black hole into which the forged documents passed via Italy have fallen, considering that they triggered the whole Niger angle to start with.

Interestingly, Condi's comment to Russert was that no one know that the Niger documents were forgeries, not that no one knew the whole Niger business was bogus. By the time the documents surfaced (Oct 2002) they should have known from both CIA and INR that the whole thesis was bogus. Condi nicely dodged that by concentrating on the forgery aspect of it. The forgeries were only exposed in Feb 2003, b3cause the US held onto them. But that was well after the debunking by countless people of the idea itself, and was, once one knows that whole history, a poorly done effort to resurrect a thoroughly discounted talking point. And I think the most interesting point is who.

It is mysterious where Plame's name came up. The press were asking Libby about Plame on July 7th in DC (well before Novak talks to Rove), so this probably didn't come from Air Force One. The June 10th INR memo also discussed Mrs. Wilson rather than Plame as I understand it.

Wasn't it Seymour Hersh who reported back a couple of years ago that the documents were faked up by retired CIA types, that they intentionally did a bad job so as to embarass the DIA crowd whom they thought lacked document examiners. I don't remember the whole story -- was it a book or a New Yorker article??? Hersh as I remember reported it as a second person tid bit from one of his sources.

But I do want to know why the documents were not handed off to one of the professional document examiners we train and employ at some expense and which would be a normal part of the process of examining anything that came in over the transom.

When methods deviate from the normal in intelligence work -- you need to pay attention to that abnormality.

I must say with Mathews on Hardball and Oberman on his show doing ten minute segments or so on this -- the heat is on. I bet Bush is really looking forward to his Summer Vacation in Texas -- riding his bike, clearing brush, taking long lazy naps in the Texas Heat. Even the Editor of the Washington Times, Toney Blanklye, is taking pot shots at the holes in the story. We need to remember that many of those who signed the "retired" CIA officer letter that came out yesterday are Republicans, and probably good sources for the Washington Times.

In one of his books, "The Wars of Watergate" Stanley Kutler characterizes the "whole thing" as the "War of FBI Succession." (and that was long before Mark Felt was ID'ed.) This thing may well be something very similar. I note that one of the signers of the letter was the guy whose testimony derailed the Gates nomination to head CIA on the grounds that he had politicized the intelligence regarding USSR Military strength. (Goodman)

For those who went out and bought the Wilson book -- look at the story on pp 432-34 on the visit Pat Lang got from the Wohlstetters on the recommendation of Wolfowitz. Says it all, I think. As David Corn told the Editorial Board of "The Nation" this guy is from the establishment.

I thought my sister, littlesky, said she had posted information here about Novak's citation of Italians as the source of the forgeries. She found a Walter Pincus WashPost article in March 2003 that talks about the forgeries coming from Italy. Sorry to say that I updated my browser and appear to have lost the link she sent. Maybe she cited this on a kos thread. But Pincus says Italy well before it's cited by Novak.

As for googling Wilson and whether that might turn up Valerie Plame... They hadn't been married for all that long, had they? I wonder if there might not have still been "social" notes on the web talking about the marriage. That would seem a likely possible source of the name, Plame.

Also, re: the July 9 gaggle that Aravosis says is now missing from the WH website. What struck me, reading that exchange with Ari, was how he seemed to be trying to change the subject to the forgeries. Another example of them turning the subject to what they want to say, not what you want to know. It reminded me of the way Condi seemed to be developing her own agenda in this story.

Hersh's article is collected with others he wrote (including the "Stovepipe" one) into a book called "Chain of Command: The Road from 9/11 to Abu Ghraib" that came out last year and should be about to come out in paperback. It also includes some pieces he wrote about Afghanistan, some that were not previously published.

Apropos to our discussion, in the book (pp. 226-228) he fingers the Italians (SISMI) as the source of an intelligence report to the CIA shortly after 9/11 about Iraqi attempts to buy uranium from Niger. Hersh's CIA sources considered it amateurish. But it went to Cheney, who wanted more details. He was not satisfied with the CIA's response and, Hersh says, "It was the beginning of what turned out to be a year long tug-of-war between the C.I.A. and the Vice President's office."

Interestingly, he describes Elisabetta Burba, the Italian journalist who received the documents, as having approximately the same reaction as Joe Wilson when she heard the State of the union speech, as she had also gone to Niger to check it out.

This chapter is entitled "Behind the Mushroom Cloud" and is different from the New Yorker article cited above.

Sara--I did read those pages in Wilson's book describing a friend's unsuccessful recruiting into the neocon cabal. The whole thing is chilling.

Hersh interviewed Wilson, and has multiple sources at CIA, as well as INR. He may have additional angles in the book. What is clear is that the CIA report of Wilson's trip was floating around the gov't, but seems not to have gotten to the principals. But why would it, when Bush had made up his mind for war right about that same time, if Hersh is to be believed, and what they wanted was intel that supported their case?

WRT how this got sidelined, I'm pretty sure it got sidelined by WINPAC, which had a combo of people who were doing their job and those doing Cheney's job. Notably, that's where Fred Fleitz worked when he wasn't working with Bolton. WINPAC received Wilson's report. WINPAC made some fishy claims that were integrated into the NIE. And a few more things.

The best of all, though, is that when the INR analyst saw those forgeries, he knew they were forgeries RIGHT AWAY. And he sent an email out to a bunch of non-proliferation people saying he'd hand out the forged documents the next day at a non-proliferation meeting they were going to. Well, surprise. By the next day, he was "on leave" (must be the double super secret unplanned kind) and someone else handed out the forgeries to the other agencies. And somehow, the CIA people all claimed not to have received them, even though they were later found in CIA archives. That was back in October. The CIA "discovered" they didn't have the documents in January. They got them, then promptly sent them out to be translated. Translated. From French. I mean, I know these guys were Iraq guys and all. But French. We're not talking about a translation from Swahili or something. And it takes a full month for them to be translated.